Day 12, on the road again. Jess' best friend Mike from Louisiana was up here in Michigan this weekend and volunteered to run with me. Mike played Rugby for Louisiana Tech, and I hoped that he could give me some hints for running and fighting the tension when sleepiness sets in. Today, we ran at Jess' parents' neighborhood. A nice and quiet run through a suburban area with trees and some riding stables. The loop we ran was two miles long and I was surprised that after the day of rest yesterday, I could handle these two miles without any problems and could have gone for another mile, but that was the plan for the next day. Here are some tips I got out from Mike:
- Try to land on the middle part of your foot, do not land on your heel. Landing on the heel forces a back push and makes it more difficult to move forward. The best way to land on your foot is to aim for the front bulge of your heel
- As soon as you get tired, muscles tend to become stiff and tense. The moving motion of the arms slow down, which should be avoided by any means. Drop your shoulders and try to step like you are walking on eggshells. Relax is a key point here.
- Get rid off access spit, by releasing it on the side of the road. I found the mouth motion and the loss of the spit is relaxing. The mouth muscles tend to become tense if one keep too much fluid in the mouth, which can result in whole body muscle tension.
- How to get a change of scenery without leaving the usual path. It is as simple as just running the route backwards. Never thought about it that way. Also, if you put your iPod, or MP3 Player of your choice, on random music choices and close your eyes for a little bit. Do not think about the distance (This is solely my own experience)
Please let me know if you have anything to add to it. I am looking for some simple tips on how to make longer runs more pleasant.
Time: 20 minutes
Distance: 2 miles
Strategy: Just running
Day 13 & 14 Days of rest unfortunately. Due to my allergies, I cannot stick to my workout schedule. Since today is Day 14, I will have to see how well I will be doing tonight. I might update this day depending on what's going on with Mother Nature.
Hell on Earth. What have I gotten into. I needed some guidance before I started my first run on June 2, 2009. Rachel is an accomplished runner who has several half marathons and one full marathon under her belt. She was therefore the perfect coach for my project and has been a great consultant so far.
Day 1, the treadmill - I was instructed to take it easy, don't kill yourself was pretty much what everybody told me so far. The first challenge therefore was to have a mix of running and walking - 3 minutes each for 24 minutes in total. Pain, so much pain. My breathing technique was totally out of control, which caused my lungs to burn after a little while. To distract me from the torture, I had the TV running. After a while, I checked the clock on the treadmill to see if I can finally relax my burning legs and and my aching lung... ... ... You have no idea how brutal reality can be, especially the honesty and brutal truth of time. The clock just flipped over to minute 1. I decided that treadmills are boring. After 24 minutes, I almost fell off the treadmill and was sucking the water out of the bathroom faucet, it couldn't come fast enough! At least stretching after the run was a relieve. I need to work on my endurance.
Time: 24 minutes
Distance: 1.8 miles
Strategy: 3 min. running /3 minutes walking - Treadmill (for future references: 3/3 format will be used)
Day 2 & 3, on the road - Jess and I drove with the car to find a comfortable running route in the neighborhood, especially distance was a key here. Then I could just get up in the morning and start running leaving the my apartment door and don't worry about finding a nice way away from busy streets where people could look at and laugh at me. I am not chubby, but I think that there is definitely hilarity ensued when I finished my first attempts in the public. We ended up finding a route that was exactly two miles long and had a couple of inclines and descends in the route. The Alden Run has quite some hills.
Running outside makes quite a difference. The play list on my iPod was selected to support the switches of running and walking. After a couple minutes of warm up stretches, I was on my way. I wanted to take it easy the first couple days, but my ego wouldn't let me. On both days, when I arrived back at home, I was breathing like a steam powered machine after caulking the exhaust pipes with concrete! I chugged the water like it was my salvation. I hate water... I hate it sooo much.
Time: 26 minutes
Distance: 2 miles
Strategy: 3/3 - on the road
After Day 3, I decided that my goal was to run the whole two miles without having a walking break on Day 8.
Day 4 - Day of rest
While taking a break of running and resting my sore legs, I started googling breathing techniques. I needed to change something about the steam machine inside me...
Day 5 & 6, on the road. - Adapting the new breathing techniques that I found online seemed to be quite a challenge. I am running the same route, but I was now able to switch to a 4/4 strategy.
A cute story on the side: I was wearing the Air Force t-shirt JP sent me a while ago. An older couple stopped me halfway through the run to ask me if I served. I told them that I was wearing the t-shirt for my best friend who serves in the Air Force and is currently in training. The older couple found it to be an extremely nice idea and told me to let JP now how thankful they were for serving their country. (I am German, so it is not my country... technically).
After I was done with my run, these were some really humid days, I started to include crunches and push ups into my after workout. I already start to feel better, and my belly is not so wobbly any more. This slight sign of progress already motivated me to go on with my every day doings. I also discovered that I am not so sore any more and that my legs are not burning after finishing the workouts.
Time: 20 minutes
Distance: 2 miles
Strategy: 4/4 - on the road.
Day 7 - Day of rest
This week was the worst week of my life. I never experienced this extreme of sweat and pain. But it is good pain. Pain that makes me stronger. I feel alive. Still, I feel like I want to die, and how would I possibly accomplish my goal for Day 8? Jess told me on Day 3 that it would be a great accomplishment and great progress if I could really pull it off. We will see what tomorrow brings.
